Theatre
Exhausted // Opinion WORDS BY ANONYMOUS ART BY LOLA FLEMING
(A note for the reader, this is not a bash against any artist or organization in this industry. These are just an amalgamation of thoughts and observations over the past couple of years..) I have had it, quite simply. I am exhausted of the Irish Theatre industry. It is like whipping a dead horse. A horse that has been decaying for years, but the same jockey and stables owner keeps trying to muster something from it. I know there is the age old adage “theatre has been dead for years”, or “western theatre died with the Greeks”, but, given the current state that the Irish Theatre Industry is in, it simply cannot go on for much longer. COVID-19 aside, it has been an industry marred with artistic decline for years; I am sick to death of seeing the same ideas, people, companies, aesthetics, egos, themes, actors, adaptations and interpretations of plays, directors - you name it. I remember fondly saying to a close friend “if I see another [redacted] country kitchen setting again, I will just leave the theatre.” She wholeheartedly agreed. I once stumbled upon this industry with eyes like saucers, and possessed a bright hope that someday I could be successful like the Theatre Greats. I built up an understanding and a repertoire of people, plays, styles, techniques, even enjoying the sight of the “country kitchen setting”. But years of putting blood, sweat and tears into trying to make a reputable name for myself, has exhausted me. The realization came to me upon reflection, when journaling about my career in this supposedly “dead” industry. I surmised that the reason why I am so exhausted is simply due to trying to fit in with “The Established” and their structures of existing and operating (would Modus Operandi be a better phrase?). The Established is a term I am using to convey those in this industry who decide on the ‘artistic vision’ or how theatre should be, or how an artist should convey themselves. I don’t know who came up with this, or if there is some ‘1984 Big Brother type of control going on’, but, whatever form it takes, it is most definitely there. I have succumbed to this masking, this trying to fit in with The Established. From the age of 19, I was deviating from my authentic self by trying to fit in with the popular “Established” in my course. Moulding into an image that is accepted is something that I have battled with, and subsequently lost. My time in college was marred by feelings of inadequacy based on my socio-economic background. I was in class with people from all walks of life, international students, students from outside of The Pale, middle/upper class students, but, here I was, in a place of privilege that I fought tooth and nail to be in, and I was terrified. I needed a structure to hold on to, and it was badly built. Fast forward to me trying to navigate my way through early adulthood and college, and I really hated it, but could never admit it. I despised how my clothing style was warping into what The Popular in my course were doing (I look terrible in culottes and Doc Martens). I hated that I was becoming more self-conscious of my thick Dublin accent. I began trying to fit into a size that, quite frankly, I would never fit into. Theatre is a safe space where those who didn’t fit into social norms could have a place of feeling acceptance from peers. But, within that microcosm, popular, or Established, power structures emerged yet again. 36
